Chapter 33

CHAPTER XXXIII.

There was agitation to-day in the lives of all whom these matters
concerned. It was not till the Hintock dinner-time--one o'clock--
that Grace discovered her father's absence from the house after a
departure in the morning under somewhat unusual conditions. By a
little reasoning and inquiry she was able to come to a conclusion
on his destination, and to divine his errand.

Her husband was absent, and her father did not return. He had, in
truth, gone on to Sherton after the interview, but this Grace did
not know. In an indefinite dread that something serious would
arise out of Melbury's visit by reason of the inequalities of
temper and nervous irritation to which he was subject, something
possibly that would bring her much more misery than accompanied
her present negative state of mind, she left the house about three
o'clock, and took a loitering walk in the woodland track by which
she imagined he would come home. This track under the bare trees
and over the cracking sticks, screened and roofed in from the
outer world of wind and cloud by a net-work of boughs, led her
slowly on till in time she had left the larger trees behind her
and swept round into the coppice where Winterborne and his men
were clearing the undergrowth.

Had Giles's attention been concentrated on his hurdles he would
not have seen her; but ever since Melbury's passage across the
opposite glade in the morning he had been as uneasy and unsettled
as Grace herself; and her advent now was the one appearance which,
since her father's avowal, could arrest him more than Melbury's
return with his tidings. Fearing that something might be the
matter, he hastened up to her.

She had not seen her old lover for a long time, and, too conscious
of the late pranks of her heart, she could not behold him calmly.
"I am only looking for my father," she said, in an unnecessarily
apologetic intonation.

"I was looking for him too," said Giles. "I think he may perhaps
have gone on farther."

"Then you knew he was going to the House, Giles?" she said,
turning her large tender eyes anxiously upon him. "Did he tell
you what for?"

Winterborne glanced doubtingly at her, and then softly hinted that
her father had visited him the evening before, and that their old
friendship was quite restored, on which she guessed the rest.

"Oh, I am glad, indeed, that you two are friends again!" she
cried. And then they stood facing each other, fearing each other,
troubling each other's souls. Grace experienced acute misery at
the sight of these wood-cutting scenes, because she had estranged
herself from them, craving, even to its defects and
inconveniences, that homely sylvan life of her father which in